The Empty Chair

next to Thom.
    “We have ourselves a problem, Mr. Rhyme.”
    “Call me Lincoln. Please.”
    “Go on,” Sachs said to Bell. “Tell him what you told me.”
    Rhyme glanced coolly at Sachs. She’d met this man three minutes ago and already they were in cahoots together.
    “I’m sheriff of Paquenoke County. That’s about twenty miles east of here. We have this situation and I was thinking ’bout what my cousin told me—he can’t speak highly enough of you, sir. . . .”
    Rhyme nodded impatiently for him to continue.Thinking: Where the hell’s my doctor? How many forms does she have to dig up? Is she in on the conspiracy too?
    “Anyway, this situation . . . I thought I’d come over and ask if you could spare us a little time.”
    Rhyme laughed, a sound without a stitch of humor in it. “I’m about to have surgery.”
    “Oh, I understand that. I wouldn’t interfere with it for the world. I’m just thinking of a few hours. . . . We don’t need much help, I’m hoping. See, Cousin Rol told me about some of the things you’ve done in investigations up north. We have basic crime lab stuff but most of the forensics work ’round here goes through Elizabeth City—the nearest state police HQ—or Raleigh. Takes weeks to get answers. And we don’t have weeks. We got hours. At best.”
    “For what?”
    “To find a couple girls got kidnapped.”
    “Kidnapping’s federal,” Rhyme pointed out. “Call the FBI.”
    “I can’t recall the last time we even had a federal agent in the county, other than ATF on moonshine warrants. By the time the FBI gets down here and sets up, those girls’ll be goners.”
    “Tell us about what happened,” Sachs said. She was wearing her interested face, Rhyme noted cynically—and with displeasure.
    Bell said, “Yesterday one of our local high school boys was murdered and a college girl was kidnapped. Then this morning the perp came back and kidnapped another girl.” Rhyme noticed the man’s face darken. “He set a trap and one of my deputies got hurt bad. He’s here at the medical center now, in a coma.”
    Rhyme saw that Sachs had stopped digging a fingernail into her hair, scratching her scalp, and was paying rapt attention to Bell. Well, perhaps they weren’t co-conspirators but Rhyme knew why she was so interested in a case they didn’t have the time to participate in. And he didn’tlike the reason one bit. “Amelia,” he began, casting a cool glance at the clock on Dr. Weaver’s wall.
    “Why not, Rhyme? What can it hurt?” She pulled her long red hair off her shoulders, where it rested like a still waterfall.
    Bell glanced at the spinal cord in the corner once more. “We’re a small office, sir. We did what we could—all of my deputies and some other folk too were out all night but, fact is, we just couldn’t find him or Mary Beth. Ed—the deputy that’s in the coma—we think he got a look at a map that shows where the boy might’ve gone. But the doctors don’t know when, or if, he’s going to wake up.” He looked back into Rhyme’s eyes imploringly. “We’d sure be appreciative if you could take a look at the evidence we found and give us any thoughts on where the boy might be headed. We’re outa our depth here. I’m standing in need of some serious help.”
    But Rhyme didn’t understand. A criminalist’s job is to analyze evidence to help investigators identify a suspect and then to testify at his trial. “You know who the perp is, you know where he lives. Your D.A.’ll have an airtight case.” Even if they’d screwed up the crime scene search—the way small-town law enforcers have vast potential to do—there’d be plenty of evidence left for a felony conviction.
    “No, no—it’s not the trial we’re worried about, Mr. Rhyme. It’s finding them ’fore he kills those girls. Or at least Lydia. We think Mary Beth may already be dead. See, when this happened I thumbed through a state police manual on felony investigations. It was saying that in a sexual abduction case you usually have twenty-four hours to find the victim; after that they become dehumanized in the kidnapper’s eyes and he doesn’t think anything about killing them.”
    Sachs asked, “You called him a boy, the perp. How old is he?”
    “Sixteen.”
    “Juvenile.”
    “Technically,” Bell said. “But his history’s worse than most of our adult troublemakers.”
    “You’ve checked with his family?” she asked, as if it were a foregone